In the year of Star Wars, Pink Floyd’s former engineer Alan Parsons was creating his own barmy sci-fi masterpiece, I Robot

How a young David Bowie’s artistic manifesto was captured in the three and a half perfect minutes of Changes

How London’s famous clock tower and a Jimi Hendrix groupie inspired his last great song, Dolly Dagger

David Bowie had everything to prove, but backed by his greatest band and produced by the engineer for The Beatles, he made his first classic album, Hunky Dory

Inspired by a single line from a gospel song, Paul Simon's classic Bridge Over Troubled Water has been covered by everyone from Elvis Presley to Aretha Franklin

After the minimalism of his ‘Berlin trilogy’, David Bowie went all out for a kitchen-sink art-rock album on Scary Monsters

How a song from Tom Petty’s reject pile unwittingly became a Petty/Nicks duet, and the massive hit single that launched the Fleetwood Mac icon’s solo career

The Allman Brothers Band spent the best part of 50 years ‘hittin’ the note’, with just a few clunkers. Here are some of the sweet spots of their catalogue

Released 50 years ago, Ladies Of The Canyon marked the moment when Joni Mitchell went from folk princess to pop star

In January 1970, Jimi Hendrix pulled the plug on stardom to chase a funkier, freer direction with his Band Of Gypsys. This is their story

Songwriter, producer, singer, multi-instrumentalist… Todd Rundgren's is a diverse and distinguished catalogue from a restless and progressive artist

Janis Joplin’s transition from band member to solo diva (including her only solo album released in her lifetime) was fraught with power plays, ego trips and excessive drug use

Visionary, guitar wizard and inspiration, Les Paul invented the electric guitar and drew the blueprint for contemporary music as we know it

How reclusive genius Prince learned to play nice with others, how to rock and in the process made Purple Rain, his world-beating 6th album

The record industry claimed he "wasn't black enough or white enough" to become famous - this is how the funk-rock superstar proved them wrong.

In a dry run for the sci-fi-tinged stardom he'd achieve in the early 70s, young folkie David Bowie wrote his 1969 alienation anthem of an astronaut lost in space

Although David Bowie’s Berlin-period anthem Heroes was initially something of a commercial failure, it became his most life-changing single

Half a dozen classics from the catalogue of Lenny Kravitz

From surf guitars to psychedelia, peace to paranoia, the 60s sound of Los Angeles and San Francisco was bright and multicoloured

Wilson sisters Ann and Nancy poured their feelings about love and the fragile state of the world into a debut single that became an evergreen rock classic

Step back Chuck Berry, Elvis and the rest... and meet Sister Rosetta Tharpe, one of the founding mothers of rock'n'roll

Step back Chuck Berry, Elvis and the rest, these mothers of invention were first, mixing blues, gospel, R&B and ferocious attitude to create rock’n’roll as we know it

Brother In Arms: the inside story of one of the greatest southern rock records ever made, The Black Crowes Southern Harmony And Musical Companion

There will never be another like the man who was an artist, a showman, a businessman and the creator of rock’n’roll